Maryland Fights to Keep E-voting 250
crystalattice writes "Apparently Maryland election officials never have computer problems. That's why they're fighting so hard to keep their Diebold e-voting machines. Washington Post reporter Marc Fisher received nothing but bad attitudes, dodges, and excuses when he attempted to discuss the issue with the state elections administration and Diebold." From the article: "I asked the state's elections administrator, Linda Lamone, whether Maryland wasn't just a bit too quick to adopt electronic voting. Doesn't the computer at your desk ever freeze up on you? 'No,' she replied. Never? 'No.' But surely people in your office have had that experience? 'No.' (Maybe we've found the solution to Maryland's voting problem: Everybody head on down to Linda Lamone's office, where the machines work 100 percent of the time.)"
Remember... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not so simple. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:While I belive this lady to full of it.... (Score:3, Interesting)
I've never been to a polling place that had all booths open, electric or otherwise.
I know what you mean. Last time I went to an election with punch-out paper ballots, some of the booths were blocked off with "out of order" signs -- the paper wasn't working in those ones. People complain about the unreliability of e-voting, but it's really not any worse than it used to be.
......
Okay, I'm making fun. A little. But really, have you never been to a polling location that had all boths open? Ever, using any (lack of) technology? Granted, I've only been through a few election cycles, but I haven't observed that at all.
Maybe it's just laziness (Score:1, Interesting)
The Help America Vote Act [state.md.us] has millions of dollars of funding allocated for both (1) transitions from punchcard or lever systems and (2) overall improvements.
So, there may be a question of money but not of the kickback type - that they spent a lot of money on a system that may not be compliant or, at least, insecure. That would be a, "Yeah, we didn't do our homework.".
Alternatively, this may not be about the money at all. Even if this system is deemed 'compliant', the situation may just be about the unwillingness of establishing a different system very late, and not wanting to go through with yet another round of training. Also, they may be of the mindset that any replacement for the existing system may not have time to comply with HAVA for this election, either. That would be a, "We can't do anything about it anyway.".
I agree that they're probably doing something wrong, but for a different reason.
Oh wait, this is the politics section
I was almost arrested for arguing with Diebold rep (Score:5, Interesting)
I live in Baltimore, and recently we had a flower mart downtown
Enter me. I walk up, admittedly predispositioned to not like Diebold, and asked them some questions.
1. What hard copy proof can I have of my vote?
2. Where is the paper trail with physical evidence of all votes?
3. In the case of a recount, what validation process is in place to ensure the machine's records are correct?
They gave me some BS about how at the end of the polling you can print out a list of all votes entered. I told them what I was asking for was a single, one-person, one-vote physical record, not a grand list at the end of the night. They had absolutely no answer to any of these questions.
Then I brought up the many instances of Diebold machines being hacked and asked them what security measures were in place to fix this issues. I was told they were not aware of any issues and that the machines were unhackable. I asked them if they knew how absolutely ridiculous this sounded.
At this point, some other folks had become aware of the conversation and were starting to ask the same questions about accountability and verification processes. They 2 reps balked and stalled while I pressed further, citing specific cases where Diebold machines had been compromised and blasted them for basically lying about the 'unhackability' of their machines.
Then 1 of the reps walked away. A few minutes later he returned with 2 police officers who asked me to leave. I had not raised my voice, acted theatening, or any other misconduct that would warrant my being ejected. I told the officers I was simply concerned about my right to vote being taking seriously and protected and wanted my questions answered by a company rep while I had the opportunity. The officers told me I was being disruptive. Other people came to my defense. One of the officers had his hand on his gun. They asked if I would rather be removed against my will.
So I left.
"Welcome to Maryland - You'll vote electronic and you'll LIKE it! Or else we might arrest you for asking too many questions."
Re:could be... (Score:3, Interesting)
I put it to you that you are insufficiently experienced. I have crashed every major desktop operating system ever released more than once, and many of them I've crashed many versions of them as well. Some of them, particularly AmigaDOS, MacOS 6-9, Windows 95 through ME, Windows 2000, and Windows XP I've had situations where I was able to crash them more than daily just by using certain applications. These machines were stable otherwise. But one thing that I truly believe is that no application should ever be able to crash the OS without doing direct hardware access. Unfortunately, all operating systems I've ever used have failed that test.
I've also enjoyed an illustrious career panicking various SunOS systems. :)
Re:Geez that's disturbing... (Score:2, Interesting)
How convenient. So in New Jersey, Chicago, South Florida, California, etc. you're all over the corrupt Democrats? Unlikely. Incidentally, the Maryland House of Delegates [state.md.us] and the Maryland Senate [state.md.us] are controlled by Democrats. The Maryland judiciary (court of appeals) is no bastion of conservative thought either, led by chief judge Robert Bell. So what if you've got a conservative governor - the rest of the government (especially those who control purchasing) are all liberal.
and they're the ones pulling this shit
Interesting. I haven't seen a single Democrat oppose election fraud and demand identification. They come up with the most bizarre excuses - claiming they're poll taxes (when the legislation pays for the cost of the ID if someone has a financial hardship), claim racial profiling (as if minorities don't have IDs to buy beer, smokes, etc.) and other bizarre arguments. Yes, Diebold is incompetent and should be thrown over a cliff. Yes, ES&S doesn't give a damn about security (they claim that's the responsibility of the vendor of the operating system they use) and should be banned. But as long as we continue wearing partisan blinders, we'll be stuck with this mess.
It's all "Hey, look over there... while we steal the vote here" misdirection.
bring up what the Democrats did 30 years ago every time we talk about what the Republicans are doing now.
Where've you been for 30 years? South Florida's hanging/swinging chad and poorly designed "a vote for Gore is a vote for Buchanan" ballets was all incompetent Democrat election commissioner stuff. New Jersey and Chicago are constant nightmares. What about the convictions in Wisconsin for Democratic party employees interfering with elections? What about the Democrat party sponsored voter registration programs at illegal alien rallies? I'm glad you do recognize the corruption of 30 years ago - you should read about how Halliburton has repeatedly bought elections in Texas and how they made a Senator who later became President [counterpunch.org]. Any guesses who that could be? Hint: His wife is one of the largest Halliburton stock owners.
The reality is that both parties are at war to out-do each other, while fat cats like Halliburton buy and control both sides. As long as we have fools who excuse the criminality of their party and oppose necessary reform (like showing a photo ID to vote) based on absurd, irrational excuses, we'll have fraud.
The reality is that we geeks miss the big crime while getting agitated about the insignificant ones. We're looking for grand conspiracies involving voting machines that are complicated and require incredible collusion, while the obvious crime stares us in the face. Let me ask: why go to all the trouble to hack into machines when a political party can load up bus loads of illegals, drive to Wisconsin, show no ID and swing an election with thousands of bogus votes? You don't need sophisticated tools to hack the cash register when the drawer is already open.
If you really want to stick it to the fat cats, quit blaming the other party and force both to clean up their acts.
On The Other Hand (Score:1, Interesting)
"Doesn't the computer at your desk ever freeze up on you?"
"But surely people in your office have had that experience?"
These are combative, accusatory, and ineffective questions which is typical of today's media.
How about this...
"In hindsight and in view of all of the reported problems with electronic voting, do you think Maryland made the right decision to adopt electronic voting when it did?"
The reporter had an agenda. And TFA reveals no clues as to whether it is an opinion piece or straight reporting.
Either way, it revealed no new information and as far as news goes was totally useless.
All Over But the Counting (Score:2, Interesting)
Georgia officials handed over the election to Diebold:
They exploited their illegally unsupervised opportunity:
Then they covered up their exploit:
It worked. We don't know the role of the patch in Georgia's vote tallies, just as we don't even know what was in the patch. We didn't even know about the extent to which Diebold ran the Georgia election until these guys started talking - years after the fact.
Remember, Diebold is the company whose CEO said in 2003 [nytimes.com] about the following year's reelection of Bush that he's "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
And Diebold is counting the votes again this year.